“Good night, Joel,” I said with more kindness than usual. Still, as he continued to stand there, as if to win me to his side, I thought of Bart, who had said many a painful thing to me when he was a boy, but not since he’d been an adult. Now he, too, was reading the Bible, using the words written in there to prove some moot point. Had Joel helped bring life back to what I thought was dormant? I stared at the old man, who edged away from me almost fearfully.
“Why do you look like that?” I asked sharply.
“Like what, Catherine?”
“Like you’re afraid of me.”
His smile was thin, pitiful. “You are a fearsome woman, Catherine. Despite all your blond prettiness, you can sometimes act as hard as my mother.”
I started, stunned that he could think that. I could not possibly be like that mean old woman.
“You also remind me of your mother,” he whispered in his thin, brittle voice, drawing his old bathrobe more tightly about his skinny frame. “And you seem far too young to be in your fifties. My father used to say the wicked always managed to stay young and healthy longer than those who had a place waiting for them in Heaven.”
“If your father went on to Heaven, Joel, then I will gladly go in the opposite direction.”
He eyed me as if I were a pitiful object who just didn’t understand before he ambled away.
Once I was back beside Chris, he woke up long enough for me to spill out the scene between Joel and me. Chris glared at me in the dimness. “Catherine, how rude of you to talk to an old man like that. Of course you can’t drive him out. In a way he has more right here than all of us, and it is Bart’s home legally, even if we do have lifetime residency privileges.”
Anger filled me. “Can’t you recognize that Joel has become the father figure Bart has been looking for all his life?” And there I’d gone and hurt him. He stiffened and turned away from me.
“Good night, Catherine. Perhaps you should stay in bed and mind your own business for a rare change. Joel is a lonely old man who is grateful to have a champion like Bart and a place where he can live out the rest of his life. Stop imagining you see Malcolm in every old man you meet, for eventually, if I live long enough, I’ll be another old man.”
“If you look and act like Joel, I’ll be glad to see the end of you as well.”
Oh, how could I say that to the man I loved? He shifted farther away, then refused to respond to my touch on his arm. “Chris, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” My hand caressed his arm, then moved to slip inside his pajama jacket.
“I think it best if you keep your hands to yourself. I’m not in the mood now. Good night, Catherine, and remember, when you look for trouble, you usually find it.”
* * *
I heard a distant door close. My illuminated wristwatch read three-thirty. Drawing on a robe, I slipped into Melodie’s room and sat down to wait. It was four before she managed the long trip from the garage to her bedroom. Did she and Bart stop to embrace and kiss? Did they whisper love words they couldn’t save for tomorrow? What else could be talking her so long? Faint hints of dawn approaching showed over the rimming mountains. I paced the floor of her room, growing terribly impatient. Finally I heard her coming. Stumbling in the door of her room, Melodie held her high-heeled silver slippers in one hand, and in her other hand she held a small silver clutch.
She was six months pregnant, but in her loose-fitting black dress it was hardly noticeable. She jerked when she saw me rise from a chair, then choked as she backed away. “Well, Melodie,” I said cynically, “don’t you look pretty.”
“Cathy, is Jory all right?”
“Do you really care?”
“You sound so angry with me. You look at me so hard—what have I done, Cathy?”
“As if you don’t know,” I said to her with angry emphasis, forgetting the tact I’d intended to use. “You slip out on a rainy night with my second son, and you come home hours later with red strawberry marks on your neck, with your lipstick smeared and your hair unbound, and still you ask, what . . . have . . . you . . . done. Why don’t you tell me . . . what you have done.”
She stared at me with huge eyes of disbelief, half-blended with guilt, with shame, but there was some element of hope there as well. “You’ve been like my mother, Cathy,” she cried, her eyes tearing as they pleaded for my understanding. “Please don’t fail me now—now when I need a mother more than I ever have before.”
“But you forget, I am Jory’s mother first and foremost. I am also Bart’s mother. When you betray Jory, you betray me.”
Melodie cried out again, pleading with me to listen to her.
“Don’t turn away from me now, Cathy. I have no one but you who will understand. Certainly you of all people have to understand! I love Jory, I’ll always love him—”
“And so you go to bed with Bart? What a fine way to show your love,” I interrupted. My voice sounded cold and hard.
Her face lowered into my lap as her arms wrapped around my waist. She clung to me. “Cathy, please. Wait until you hear my side.” Her face lifted, already stained with tears, black tears because of her mascara. Somehow this served only to make her look more pitifully vulnerable. “I’m part of the ballet world, Cathy, and you know what that means. We are the dancers who take music into our bodies and souls and make it visible for all to see, and for that we pay a price, a heavy price. You know the price. We dance with our souls bared for all to view and criticize if they will, and when the dance ends, and we hear the applause, and we accept the roses, and take the bows and the curtain calls, and hear the calls of bravo! bravo! finally we end up backstage to take off the makeup, to put on everyday mundane clothes, and then we know the best of what we are isn’t real, only fantasy. We float on wings of sensuality so powerful nobody can realize as we do the pain of all that’s so insensitive and cruel and brutal in reality.”
She hesitated to gain the strength to go on, while I sat stunned with her acuteness, for I knew the truth when I heard it—who would know better than I?
“Out there in the audience they think most of us are gay. They don’t realize we’re borne on the music, sustained by the music, made bigger than life by the sets, the applause, the adulation, and least of all do they realize that lovemaking is all that keeps us really nourished. Jory and I used to fall passionately into each other’s arms the minute we were alone and only then could we find the release we needed to wind down enough to fall asleep. Now I have no release, nor does he. He won’t listen to the music, and I can’t turn it off.”
“But you have a lover,” I said weakly, fully understanding every word she’d said. Once I, too, had flown on the joyous wings of music, and drifted downward, sick because there was no one to love me and lend reality to the fantasy world I loved best of all.
“Listen, Cathy, please. Give me a chance to explain. You know how boring it is in this house, with no one ever visiting, and the only time the phone rings it’s Bart they want. You and Chris and Cindy were always in the hospital with Jory, while I was a coward and hung back, scared, so scared he’d see my fright. I tried to read, tried to entertain myself with knitting like you do, but I couldn’t do it. I gave up and waited for the telephone to ring. Nobody from New York ever calls me. I took walks, pulled weeds from the garden. Cried in the woods, stared at the sky, watched the butterflies, and cried some more.
“Several nights after we found out that Jory would never walk or dance again, Bart came to my room. He closed the door behind him and just stood there looking at me. I was on the bed, crying as usual. I had ballet music playing, trying to recreate the feeling of how it had been with Jory, and Bart was there, staring at me with those dark, mesmerizing eyes. He stood waiting, just looking at me, until I stopped crying and he came closer to wipe the tears from my face. His eyes turned soft with love when I sat up and just stared at him. I’d never seen his eyes so kind, so full of tenderness and compassion. He touched me. My cheek, my hair, my lips. Shivers began to race up and down my s
pine. He put his hands in my hair, stared into my eyes, and slowly, ever so slowly he inclined his head until his lips brushed over mine. I’d never guessed he could be so gentle. I’d always presumed he’d take a woman by brutal force. Maybe if he had touched me with rough, uncaring hands I would have turned away. But his gentleness was my undoing. He reminded me of Jory.”
Oh, I didn’t want to hear anymore. I had to stop her before I felt pity and sympathy for her, for Bart.
“I don’t want to hear anymore, Melodie,” I said coldly, jerking my head so I didn’t have to look at the love marks that Jory might notice if she went to him now. “So now when Jory needs you most, you intend to fail him and turn to Bart,” I said bitterly. “What a wonderful wife you are, Melodie.”
She sobbed louder, covering her face with her hands.
“I remember your wedding day when you stood before the altar and made your vows of fidelity, for better or for worse—and the first worse that turns up, you find a new lover.”
While she sniffled and tried to find better words to win me to her side, I thought of how lonely this mountainside home was, how isolated. And we’d left Melodie here thinking she was too upset to want to drive anywhere. Thoughtless about what she and Bart could be doing, never suspecting she’d turn to him—the very one she’d seemed to dislike so much.
Still sniffling and crying, Melodie fiddled with her strap, while her washed-out eyes took on a certain wariness. “How can you condemn me, Cathy, when you have done even worse?”
Stung, I rose to leave, feeling that my legs had turned to lead along with my heart. She was right. I wasn’t any better. I, too, had failed, and more than once, to do the right thing. “Will you forget Bart and stay away from him, and convince Jory you still love him?”
“I do still love Jory, Cathy. It may sound strange, but I love Bart in a different way, a strange way that has nothing at all to do with the way I feel about Jory. Jory was my childhood sweetheart and my best friend. His younger brother was someone I never really liked, but he’s changed, Cathy, he has, really. No man who really hates women can make love as he does . . .”
My lips tightened. I stood in the open doorway condemning her, as once my grandmother had condemned me with her pitiless steel-gray eyes alone telling me I was the worst kind of sinner.
“Don’t go before I make you understand!” she cried, putting forth her arms and beseeching me. I closed the door, thinking of Joel, and backed against it. “All right. I’ll stay, but I won’t understand.”
“Bart loves me, Cathy, really loves me. When he says it, I can’t help but believe him. He wants me to divorce Jory. Bart has said he will marry me.” Her tearful voice diminished to a husky whisper. “I don’t truthfully know if I can live out my life with a husband confined to a wheelchair.”
Sobbing more than before, she broke and from her kneeling position fell in a crumpled heap on the floor. “I’m not strong like you are, Cathy. I can’t give Jory the support he needs now. I don’t know what to say, or what to do for him. I want to turn back the clock and bring back the Jory I used to have, for I don’t know this one. I don’t even think I want to know him . . . and I’m ashamed, so ashamed! Now all I want to do is vanish.”
My voice took on the steely edge of a razor. “You’re not going to escape your responsibilities that easily, Melodie. I’m here to see that you live up to your marriage vows. First, you will cut Bart out of your life. You will never allow him to touch you again. You will say no every time he tries anything. I am going to confront him again. Yes, I’ve already faced him down, but I’m going to be tougher. If I have to, I will go to Chris and tell him what’s going on. As you know, Chris is a very patient, understanding man with a great deal of control, but he won’t condone what you’re doing with Bart.”
“Please,” she cried. “I love Chris like a father! I want him to keep on respecting me.”
“Then leave Bart alone! Think of your child, which should come first. You shouldn’t be having sex now anyway, it’s sometimes not safe.”
Her huge eyes closed, squeezed back the tears; then she was nodding and promising never to make love with Bart again. Even as she vowed, I didn’t believe her. I didn’t believe Bart either when I spoke to him before I went to bed.
* * *
Morning came and I hadn’t slept at all. I rose tired and listless, putting on a false smile for Jory before I tapped on his door, announcing myself. He invited me to come in. He appeared happier than he had last night for some reason, as if overnight thought had calmed him down. “I’m glad Melodie has you to lean on,” said Jory as I helped him to turn over.
Each day Chris, the nurse, and I took turns moving his legs and massaging them when the therapist wasn’t there to do it for him. This way his muscles wouldn’t atrophy. His legs, due to the massaging, had regained a little of their former shape.
I took that as a huge step forward. Hope . . . in this house of dark misery we were always clinging to hope we colored yellow—like the sun we’d seldom seen.
“I was expecting Melodie to come in this morning,” Jory said with a bit of wistfulness, “since she failed to even stop by and say good night last night.”
* * *
Days passed. Melodie disappeared often, as did Bart. My faith in Melodie had eroded. No longer could I meet her eyes and smile. I stopped trying to talk to Bart and turned to Jory for companionship. We watched TV together. We played games together. We competed in silly jigsaw competitions to see who could find the right pieces faster. We sipped wine in the afternoon, grew sleepy by nine and pretended, pretended that everything would work out fine.
There was something about being in bed most of the time that made him exceptionally fatigued. “It’s the lack of proper exercise,” he said, pulling on the trapeze fastened to his head-board. “At least I’m keeping my arms strong—where did you say Melodie was?”
I put down the bootee I’d just finished and picked up the yarn to make another. In between games I knitted and watched TV. When I wasn’t with Jory, I was in my room typing the journal I was keeping of our lives. My last book, I told myself. What more did I have to say? What else could happen to us?
“Mom! Don’t you ever listen to me? I asked if you knew where Melodie was, and what she’s doing.”
“She’s in the kitchen, Jory,” I said quickly. “Busy preparing just the kind of dinner you like most.”
A look of relief brightened his face. “I’m worried about my wife, Mom. She comes in and does small things for me, but her heart doesn’t seem in it.” A shadow fleeted through his eyes, quick to disappear when he saw my piercing look. “I say to you all the things I need to say to her. It hurts to watch her pulling away from me bit by bit. I want to speak out and say I’m still the same man inside, but I don’t think she wants to know that. I believe she wants to think that I’m different because I can no longer dance or walk, and that makes it easier for her to break away and release all the ties that bind us. She never talks to me about the future. She hasn’t even discussed names for our child. I’ve been looking in books for just the right names for our son or daughter. I tell myself, like you said, that she’s pregnant, and I’ve been reading up on that subject, too. Just to make up for my former lack of interest . . .”
On and on he talked, convincing himself with his own words that it was her pregnancy that was responsible for all the changes in his wife.
I cleared my throat and used my chance. “Jory, I’ve been giving this serious thought. Your doctor said once you’d be better off in the hospital than staying here and having someone come to help with your rehabilitation. You and Melodie can rent a small apartment near the hospital, and she can drive you each day to Rehab. It’s almost winter, Jory. You don’t know about winters in this western mountainous part of Virginia. They’re freezing. The wind never stops blowing. It snows often. The roads leading here from the village are often blocked. The state keeps the highways and expressways open, but the small private roads to this estat
e are often closed. I’m thinking of the days when your nurse won’t be able to come, or your physical therapist, and you need daily exercise. If you live near the hospital, all your physical needs can easily be met.”
He stared at me in hurt surprise. “You mean you want to get rid of me?”
“Of course not. You’ve got to confess you don’t like this house.”
His eyes darted to the windows where the rain was coming down hard, driving dead leaves and late-blooming roses into the earth. All the summer birds had flown away.
The wind whipped around the house, finding its way through small crevices, shrieking and howling in this replica just as much as it had in the old, old original.
Jory said from behind me, as I just continued staring out, “I like what you and Mel did to these rooms. You’ve given me a haven safe from the scorn of the world, and right now, I don’t want to leave and face those who used to admire my grace and skill. I don’t want to be separated from you and Dad. I feel we’ve grown closer than we’ve ever been, and the holidays are coming up.
“And if the roads from here to there might be closed for my nurse and my therapist, they’ll also be closed for you and Dad. Don’t put me out, Mom, when I most want to stay. I need you. I need Dad. I even need this chance to grow closer to my brother. I’ve been thinking a lot about Bart recently. Sometimes he comes and sits nearby, and we talk. I think, at last, we’re beginning to be the kind of friends we were before your mother moved into that house next door, way back when he was nine . . .”
Uneasily I fidgeted, thinking of Bart’s dual face, coming in to be his brother’s friend and seducing his wife behind his back.
“If it’s what you want, Jory, stay. But give it more thought. Chris and I could move to the city just to be with you and Melodie, and we can make things as comfortable for you there as they are here.”
The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! Page 138